Re: What's left over.

Jeff Garzik
2002-10-31T20:56:42Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:

> In particular when it comes to this project, I'm told about
> "netdump", which doesn't try to dump to a disk, but over the net.
> And quite frankly, my immediate reaction is to say "Hell, I
> _never_ want the dump touching my disk, but over the network
> sounds like a great idea".
>
>

[yes, I realize the LKCD merge debate is over, bear with me :)]

I'm sort of in the middle on this issue: The existence of netdump does
not imply that disk dumps are a bad thing.

netdumps require a net dump server, and it is simply not realistic at
all to assume that users seeing crashes will always have a netdump
server set up in advance, or even have multiple machines to make that
possible. Disk dumps are valuable because their requirements are very
low, and because of all the user-support reasons that Andrew Morton
mentioned in this thread.

That said, I used to be an LKCD cheerleader until a couple people made
some good points to me: it is not nearly low-level enough to truly be
of use in crash situations. netdump can work if your interrupts are
hosed/screaming, and various mid-layers are dying. For LKCD to be of
any use, it needs to _skip_ the block layer and talk directly to
low-level drivers.

So, I think the stock kernel does need some form of disk dumping,
regardless of any presence/absence of netdump. But LKCD isn't there yet...

Jeff